Messages - Joseph Lithius

A random password? That seems simple enough to code... I'd actually coded an RNG script for piano-playing Kilwala hanging out in the Snail Stop, before, to let him play literally any song in the game, at-random (how he does so using only a piano is beyond me)... so, I can't imagine this would be much different. There would just be more coding involved.

See, the way I'd do it is... at the start of every game, a random number would be generated and set into a counter. When you get to the Factory, the computers that tell you and receive the password would read the number from the counter and spit out one of X number of lines -- one of which being the classic "Zabie" password. The complicated part of this would come in actually programming the security computer to recognize and accept the inputs... but, I don't guess it would be that complicated, really. Just a matter of "if X = Y then go to Z" sort of events. But, that might go beyond the scope of the hack, so...

Chrono is still going to have to go to the factory, watching Joseph's videos shows that it is a huge mess if he is not is the lead, so for a few spots like the prison break and the factory he will still be forced in the lead.

You... do know that's fixable, right? It's just a matter of making sure the correct trigger is triggering the correct thing, when activated. However, making Crono an optional character will still require a bit of work, between editing and playtesting. Which is exactly why it's on the "wild ambitions" part of my "things I'd like to do/seen done" list, for Chrono Trigger. Hee hee.

My real question is how do you block a party without Crono from doing the Zeal events?

On a technical level, it's pretty easy. Just set up an event that checks to see if Crono is in the party, before going to Enhasa, then lock him in, during.

Storywise, though? There's technically no reason to ever drag Crono along on any of this mess... or, really, any of the events of the game. But, between Ayla and Marle, I'm sure some story could be written to where they absolutely demand his presence.Like, for example, let's say Ayla wanted him to help attack the Tyrano Lair (because, she thinks he's the strongest of her strong friends) and refused to fly the Dactyl, without him. That seems like the most logical point to lock him in, to me, without making things seem too obvious or cliché.Alternately, the "lock point" could be set to after finding the Epoch. But, Janus' vague proclamation would have to be edited to accommodate, if Crono isn't present, at the time.

There's a whole lotta ifs-and-or-buts to consider, when changing something that significant. It's, honestly, kind of a mess. But, I reckon that we can help, if Ben needs it!

Didn't work much on this yesterday but I did make it so Crono could be swapped at anytime only a forced character in Zeal.

Funny you mention that. I've been kind of half-testing keeping the party entirely free to rearrangement (PAR code 7F01DE00), during my playtesting -- mostly to put the "story-centric" character into the first slot (Lucca during The Queen is Gone, Robo during The Factory Ruins, etc). I've experienced a few odd priority issues, here-or-there -- usually with a non-Crono character getting stuck in an animation -- but only one event, so far, outright broke.

If you swap Lucca and Crono's placement around, before the Dragon Tank battle, after beating the boss, the game soft-locks. If I had to guess at why, it's because the game is trying to call an event from CHR00 (the first party memory) rather than Object 1 (specifically Crono) and, if Lucca is in the CHR00 spot, the events can't continue. It's kind of odd that it would do that after telling Object 1 to finish off the Dragon Tank, though... but, then, the guts of Chrono Trigger are full of weird and unexpected things... like, for example, in the Denadoro Mountains, there's a second Ogre gauntlet which, for whatever reason, was disabled.

Oh, and, if you want a laugh, at an inappropriate time, try putting Robo in the first party slot, before the R-Series battle. I found the results pretty amusing...

Edit: Not having Crono in the first party slot, during the party in 65M BC, will also soft-lock the game, during the party and after waking Ayla.

Regarding Crono's Clone/the Doppel Doll, edale's right... but, they're missing one important part of that explanation.

If you wait until you need the doll...

Spoiler:

Gaspar will mention Dr. Bekkler, by name, at the End of Time. When you go to visit Dr. Bekkler, he'll immediately tell you that he knows you need the doll and cut you a deal: If you win his game, the doll is free, like usual... but, if you lose, depending on how badly you lose, the doll will cost you money -- not Silver Points but actual money.

I always thought that was kind of neat and expands on an otherwise minor character in a significant way.

Only the party will call Magus by his given name, everyone else still calls him Magus

Oh? I hadn't even started on that one. I'm glad you liked the idea enough to implement it, though! I can't imagine it took any small amount of time, even with a text dump handy.Unless... maybe, you exported the entire script and swapped out the appropriate "{Magus}" triggers for "[the?] Magus" text. Is that a thing Temporal Flux can do, easily...? 'cause, I never looked into it, ha hah.

So, as some of you may remember, many moons ago, I was working on a couple of different Chrono Trigger projects. My original plan was to combine "Level Zero" and "Retranslation" into one thing -- for my own entertainment. I kind ended up going went mad with power, when I realized just what I could do, using Temporal Flux, and went well beyond the original scope of that idea.Some time later, I grabbed all the new/changed content, from that project, and started over, using the base game. Eventually, though, I kind of got burnt-out and lost interest -- but, not before getting some fun stuff done.

Well, come this month, I found out that ThegreatBen (and company) released a really cool-looking ROM hack that, coincidentally, shared the name of my own project, as well as someone else's. And, as it turned out... it basically did what I'd intended to do... but, far better. So, to finally get to the point... I decided to donate what I'd done to Ben (and company)'s project.

All that being said, expect to see some fun changes in some unexpected, in the future. "What kind of changes?" Well, that's up to Ben, at this point, hee hee! But, there's definitely one or two changes coming which I hope fans of the base game will enjoy.

In all seriousness, I started using Imgur back in 2012 and I've never once had a problem linking images. I don't see anything regarding enabling or disabling external linking in the settings, either. However, I did stumble upon this interesting little tidbit in the Terms of Service page:

Quote from: Imgur Terms of Service

Also, don't use Imgur to host image libraries you link to from elsewhere, content for your website, advertising, avatars, or anything else that turns us into your content delivery network.

… … …Avatars are more or less what I have been using them for.It's probably not a problem, though, since I don't use an excessive amount of bandwidth.Probably...I'd still advise against it, though...?

For those who don't know what Isao Kronos it talking about, back in late June/early July, Photobucket decided to ax support for external linking for free and Pro users alike. This decision was made because the site was losing money -- and a lot of it! Since then, free and Pro users' linked images have been replaced with something along these lines:Following the URL in the image leads to a new payment plan page. This new plan -- which is completely independent from the previous "Pro" plan -- allows users to link and display their images on the web from Photobucket... for about $400.00 USD annually.

Photobucket did this with very little warning, sending out e-mails to everyone only after the fact. Amusingly (or frustratingly), some mail services (like GMail) recognized the e-mail as junk mail and some people never got it, to begin with -- myself, included. Luckily, I'd already migrated elsewhere years prior since the redesigned interface wasn't working for me. But, I digress.

The point of this (currently unsanctioned) PSA is to warn and/or remind users that Photobucket is no longer allowing external linking of image. I'm also not sure they're allowing users to use pass-through links (posting URLs instead of IMGs) but I haven't tried. So, for now, it's probably best that you guys find alternate image hosting sites such as the aforementioned Imgur, PostImage, Tinypic, or other sites which allow external linking.

I gotta say... the way you guys implemented a "cutscene skip" for the intro stage is, uh... interesting. Heh heh heh heh.

It's pretty neat that this hack is compatible with my hack, too. I mean, as far as I know. I haven't tested it or anything but I'm assuming you guys did. Otherwise, why would that specifically be mentioned? ;3

Alright, my interests have shifted. Instead of a Castlevania III ROM hack, I've found something far more simple to do.

I want to prevent all the music in Mega Man (World) II on the Game Boy from playing, but leave the sound effects active and functional. This isn't for a hack or even sound effect ripping. I actually just want to mute the soundtrack so I can make a playthrough where I overlay a completely different soundtrack over the semi-silent game. Silly idea, I know. But, it passes the time.

In any case, I've found that the music is stored at $1CCC0 to - $1F442 (with three trailing $00 bytes, for some reason) and that tinkering with the first byte -- $F0 -- will make the game play the New Weapon tune all throughout the game non-stop. Messing with the first three bytes will also silence the game music, but the sound engine will eventually deteriorate and cause the sound effects to stop working properly. That being said, I have no idea where to go from here.

If anyone wants to tinker with it, I'd be very appreciative. Otherwise, don't sweat it. I'm just goofing around, after all.

I'm sure this has been suggested -- probably numerous times -- but, how about a hack of Castlevania III that adds the Akumajou Densetsu VRC6 soundtrack in while leaving the game itself intact?

"Why would you want that?" you might ask. Well, the international release of the game is actually considerably harder, as was the case with many US NES games during this time. Damage dealt to the player increases every 3 levels, some bosses and enemies have harder or different patterns, and most impressively, loop 1 (the "second quest") of the game adds unique enemies, such as the Armored Spear Guard and Medusa Skulls, which are far more irritating to deal with. There's also "name codes" for loop 1, starting with the helpers, and of course, the "Help Me" 10-lives code.

Now, the ultimate version of the game would be this idea, but with the inclusion of the harder Phantom Bat, Orphic Vipers (Water Dragons), and Dracula 1 and 2, plus the Dracula 2 collision fix (Alucard can't kill Dracula 2 in the US/EU version because his skulls block shots) as well as the opening coffins from the Royal Mummy/Cyclops/Pazuzu (Lesser Demon) bosses and uncensored graphics (crosses, half-dressed statues, Medusa) from the Japanese version, but I'm willing to settle for just the US version with the Japanese soundtrack as I figure that would be considerably easier to do. But, that's just me.

It always annoyed me that in Zelda ALttP you cound not change directions while running fast with the Pegasus boots. […] So my question would be if it is possible at all to put this Feature in ALttP so Link can swoosh though Hyrule in super speed?

Cool. Back on my laptop and now there's a bar on the left and the right. BUT, when I pick the Metroid theme the site is still using the old layout.

Isn't that a good thing, though...?

Actually, the new site theme looks alright, now. The double-right column thing only happens at larger (than 1366px) resolution and the left bar is persistent until about 1024px. But, um... why did the main site forget what theme I was using since yesterday?It's still mighty bright, too. If I could get this theme in a nice shade of blue, I'd be good to go~

I looked numerous times last night and just looked today. I couldn't find anything to change the theme for the main site.

Same here. I like the new layout of the main site and forum but when I select the Metroid theme the forum has the old layout and the main site is unchanged. The new layout with the Metroid theme colors would be cool enough for me.

I'm using Firefox and Windows 7 and the main page does not have the menu on the left side.

EDIT: I even cleared my browser history and reloaded the page but it still did not appear.

I (and I think a couple people before me) figured it out. The updated site, on the default theme, requires users to have a display with greater than 1366 px (which is my laptop's maximum display width) to see the left sidebar. Alternately, zooming out to 90% in Google Chrome seemed to do it, for me. Changing the theme from RNDH Boss to RNDH Pro changed the site back to what it was before, but for those who are curious, yes, the Metroid theme is still there and fully-compatible with the new HTML5/CSS3 backend! At least, as far as I can tell.

So... yeah! The new theme is not exactly ideal and I would have gotten used to it, but I'm infinitely happy that I don't even have to! Yay!

Edit: Changing the site theme also changes the forum theme, just like always. (You can still set the forum theme independently of the site theme, though.)

Wh-wh... where's the old, classic site?! This is intentional?! Oh my god! I thought my connection was doing that thing where it fails to load a CSS style sheet, so the page loads up in plain text format! Wah!!

Hyperbole aside, I can honestly say I do not like this theme. It's "sterile," it has no personality, the forum looks generic, and the front page is squished and clunky at 1280 1366px width. And, actually... the site looks a little better at a more narrow resolution as the right-hand boxes on the front page get stacked into one column. The default forum theme is also very bright and changing it to a darker one doesn't (yet?) appear to carry over to the main site... which is also very bright.

I know time is ever-progressing and things need to change for this-reason-or-that, but I'm really hoping that more work is done on the default themes to give it more of that familiar personality of the old site.

Edit: For the curious, you can change your forum theme back to the old classic theme ("romh"), as well as others, by going into the theme picker under your Profile.

It's always really fascinating to see a video game translated into proper Arabic.In my head, it would be like trying to add a perfectly connected cursive font into a game.And then, of course, there's the whole change of left-to-right into right-to-left... How do??